Lumines Live!
More information about tomorrow's fall (Autumn, damn it!! And it's Winter anyway!) dashboard update for the Xbox 360 has slipped forth into the world, with details emerging of a coming dedicated budget area of Xbox Live Arcade.
Dubbed 'Xbox Live Arcade Hits', the service will offer "some of the best selling Xbox LIVE Arcade games... at permanently reduced prices", according to Microsoft. Or, to you and SPOnG, plain old different prices.
Leading the charge will be Bankshot Billiards 2 and Lumines LIVE (originally at 1,200 Microsoft Points) at 800 points each (you might remember that Microsoft actually already reduced the price of Lumines, but we hate to quibble). At a lower price will be Marble Blast Ultra (previously 800 points), Small Arms (already 400 points, originally 800) and Zuma Deluxe (previously 800 points), which will be available for 400 Microsoft Points each.
As you've no doubt noticed looking through the list, not everything being shunted under the 'Arcade Hits' banner is actually getting a price cut at this stage, although they've all seen a cut at some point. What's new about the latest XBLA initiative is that titles selling at less than their original price will have a dedicated area so you bargain hunters (cheapskates) can locate them more efficiently.
The biggie in the update for many 360 owners, of course, will be 'Xbox Originals', which will make old certain Xbox (1) games available for download. Another feature which may or may not float your boat (depending on whether or not you already gave up interacting with people in 3D life) is the increased social networking functionality being added to Live.
The update will also include code for 'Inside Xbox', a straight-to-your-360 (totally unbiased... ahem) news feed for all things Xbox set to launch on December 11th.
For SPOnG, this last piece of information is actually more significant than any 'permanent price reduction'. All of the platform holders want narrow-cast news to a captive audience - it's an ideal control system to minimise negative coverage.
Rather than relying on you to visit xbox.com or any of the other official or platform holder semi-official sites (yes, we're looking at you Sony/threespeech) you can have the 'news' pushed straight at you. You can't fault companies for wanting to control information regarding their products - if you could only tell people good things about yourself, you would, wouldn't you?
Let's hope that Microsoft (a) enables some critical analysis (b) produces a news ticker that's not a utterly hopeless at the one on Sony's PlayStation 3... (c) gamers don't become complacent enough to only take news from officially sanctioned sources... we did say, 'hope'.
Dubbed 'Xbox Live Arcade Hits', the service will offer "some of the best selling Xbox LIVE Arcade games... at permanently reduced prices", according to Microsoft. Or, to you and SPOnG, plain old different prices.
Leading the charge will be Bankshot Billiards 2 and Lumines LIVE (originally at 1,200 Microsoft Points) at 800 points each (you might remember that Microsoft actually already reduced the price of Lumines, but we hate to quibble). At a lower price will be Marble Blast Ultra (previously 800 points), Small Arms (already 400 points, originally 800) and Zuma Deluxe (previously 800 points), which will be available for 400 Microsoft Points each.
As you've no doubt noticed looking through the list, not everything being shunted under the 'Arcade Hits' banner is actually getting a price cut at this stage, although they've all seen a cut at some point. What's new about the latest XBLA initiative is that titles selling at less than their original price will have a dedicated area so you bargain hunters (cheapskates) can locate them more efficiently.
The biggie in the update for many 360 owners, of course, will be 'Xbox Originals', which will make old certain Xbox (1) games available for download. Another feature which may or may not float your boat (depending on whether or not you already gave up interacting with people in 3D life) is the increased social networking functionality being added to Live.
The update will also include code for 'Inside Xbox', a straight-to-your-360 (totally unbiased... ahem) news feed for all things Xbox set to launch on December 11th.
For SPOnG, this last piece of information is actually more significant than any 'permanent price reduction'. All of the platform holders want narrow-cast news to a captive audience - it's an ideal control system to minimise negative coverage.
Rather than relying on you to visit xbox.com or any of the other official or platform holder semi-official sites (yes, we're looking at you Sony/threespeech) you can have the 'news' pushed straight at you. You can't fault companies for wanting to control information regarding their products - if you could only tell people good things about yourself, you would, wouldn't you?
Let's hope that Microsoft (a) enables some critical analysis (b) produces a news ticker that's not a utterly hopeless at the one on Sony's PlayStation 3... (c) gamers don't become complacent enough to only take news from officially sanctioned sources... we did say, 'hope'.
Companies:
Microsoft
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Comments
SuperSaiyan4 4 Dec 2007 10:10
1/1
This is all well and good apart from download Xbox originals which will not be updated or include achievemants but what about IPTV service and the movie on demand service?
From what I know this/these services should be out this year.
Spong any chance you could push to find out more on when the IPTV service and the movies on demand will be launched for Europe?
I watched an old games program on Bravo the other day gamers guide to...Xbox 360 it was and they showed the IPTV service and it was fantastic! Although restricted to which IP offers it.
From what I know this/these services should be out this year.
Spong any chance you could push to find out more on when the IPTV service and the movies on demand will be launched for Europe?
I watched an old games program on Bravo the other day gamers guide to...Xbox 360 it was and they showed the IPTV service and it was fantastic! Although restricted to which IP offers it.